'They don’t expect much from my education because I am a girl'

“My mother and I fought about it just last night,” says 21-year-old Asha Bassi. “For the past three and a half years,” she explains, “my parents have been asking me to quit my education and get married”.

A final year student at Savitri Jyotirao Samajkarya Mahavidyalaya in Yavatmal city, Asha is pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work. She is among the first in her family to receive formal education. “Girls who marry early are praised,” she says, adding, “But I want to educate myself, it is the only way I can be free.”

Asha is from Jewali village of Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district and belongs to the Mathura Labhan community which has been listed as a De-notified Tribe (Vimukta Jati) in the state. Her parents are farmers and grow soya, cotton, wheat and millets on the land they own in Jewali.

The family depends on agriculture to raise their four children – three daughters and a son. Asha is the eldest child and lives with her maternal uncle and aunt in Yavatmal city while she earns her Bachelor’s Degree.

Asha’s parents enrolled her to a zilla parishad (ZP) school near their house at the age of 7 at the insistence of a few local teachers. She studied there till Class 3, after which she moved to Yavatmal city 112 kms away from Jewali. There she studied in a school affiliated to the Maharashtra State Board and eventually enrolled in a nearby college.

“Girls in our community usually study till Class 7, after which they are gradually made to drop out of schools. Very few attend college,” says Asha. Even her younger sister was married three years ago.

“Our community is conservative,” Asha says. The societal fear that girls might marry for love or people of other castes often adds to the pressure girls face for marriage. “If a girl elopes with her partner, her friends are pulled out of school as well,” Asha explains. “I don’t know of any girl in my community who has married outside her caste.”

Asha says that the pressure to get married heightened during the covid-19 pandemic during which she had moved back home to Jewali village. She even met a few prospective men for marriage. “During the pandemic, more than 30 girls in my locality who are less than 21 years of age were married off,” says Asha.

Since girls are not encouraged to pursue higher education in Jewali, education is seldom deemed a valid reason for delaying marriage. “Since my younger sister is married and I am not, people look at me with suspicion,” Asha adds.

“Whatever I do [for my education], I do it all by myself,” Asha says, her disappointment evident. Since she is the first in her family to pursue higher education, she does not receive much guidance from them. Her father, Balsing Bassi, studied till Class 11 and her mother Vimal studied till Class 5. “Even now, they don’t expect much from my education because I am a girl,” says Asha, adding that seeking education has become “ lotaycha kaam ” for her – work that involves a lot of physical and mental struggle.

“No one at home was involved in my education,” says Asha. “I wish my mother had told me, “ Tu kar, me tuzya pathishi ahe ” [You study, I have your back].” But Asha says that her mother is the strongest critic of her seeking an education.

The nearest college to Jewali is in Bittargaon village 12 kms away. “Parents are scared of their daughter’s safety if they travel alone to and from school. So, girls usually travel in a group,” says Asha, highlighting how robust educational infrastructure aids education for girls. “If one girl’s discontinues school, other parents also ask their daughter to drop out as companions to travel become scarce.”

Asha recalls how the move to Yavatmal city for school was not an easy one. She spoke the Mathura Labhan dialect which was distinct from the Marathi used as the medium of instruction in her school. This made participating in class or in school events difficult. “My classmates used to ridicule my dialect,” Asha says, adding, “I feared they would laugh at me if I spoke in my dialect in class”.

The hesitation inhibited Asha’s progress in school. “Till Class 6, I could only write Marathi alphabets and not full sentences. I could not even read basic words like kutra [dog] and manjar [cat] till Class 5”.

But all her doubts faded away when she scored 79 per cent in her Maharashtra State Board Senior Secondary School Certificate (SSC) Examination for Class 10 and managed to confidently persuade her maternal uncle to let her study further. In Class 12, she scored 63 per cent.

Asha’s academic achievements, still matter little to those around her – “My parents can never proudly say that their daughter is pursuing her graduation degree in the city because it is not a worthy pursuit in our society.”

The trend of getting married early saps all enthusiasm for education from girls. “If it is certain that they will get married off at 16 years of age, why will girls work hard to get an education?” Asha asks. Yet, her ambitions remain fuelled. Secure in her awareness of the merits of her education, she says, “The reason I can dream of a secure future is only because of education”.

Asha enjoys reading. Some of her favourite books are Hamrasta Nakartana by Sarita Awhad and Findri by Sunita Barde, which are texts gleaning from the lives of marginalised women. She wants to pursue a Master’s degree in women studies and has already been selected as a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University, Sonipat.

Moving to Yavatmal city greatly bolstered Asha’s confidence. “Even though my relatives deem a degree in Social Work inferior, it has been very rewarding for me,” she says. In Jewali, the households of those belonging to Asha's Mathura Labhan community are collectively called taande . These are usually located away from the main settlements. “This isolation,” says Asha, “makes it difficult for us to stay connected with modern, progressive thought.” Her teachers in college mentored her with diligence, especially Professor Ghanshyam Darane who taught Marathi.

“It is believed that women are simply not capable of achieving anything,” says Asha, more angry than sad. “I want to change that,” she says, adding, “Once I become something big, I want to come back to my village and bring about progressive change for girls. I do not want to run away.”

But first, she has to tackle the upcoming marriage season during which the pressure to marry will only increase. Asha says, “I am going to require a lot of strength to hold up”.